LinuxLatency

Optimizing the Linux operating system

In multi-user desktop systems, it is important to assign real-time priority to the signal processing threads of audio software. To set up real-time scheduling on the system, users in the audio group must be granted permission to acquire real-time priority and lock memory in RAM. To do this, edit the /etc/security/limits.conf file with superuser privileges:

sudo gedit /etc/security/limits.conf

Add these two lines if they are not already present:

@audio - rtprio 99
@audio - memlock unlimited

Now add your user to the ’audio’ group:

sudo adduser "${USER}" audio

Log out and log in again (typically, no re-boot is required).

If you are aiming for low-latency processing, you should further optimize your system by installing a low-latency kernel and an IRQ priority management tool:

sudo apt install linux-lowlatency rtirq-init

After this step, a reboot is required to benefit from the optimization.